1.8.4-Pilferingapples
Brick!club, Les Miserables 1.8.4 , 1.8.5 Well, weather seems determined to knock me offline this week. But at least I can get today’s post up on time? First, though! 1.8.4- Authority Gains its Power And Fantine gets another handful of snow down her back. Really, all these shocks to Fantine’s system seem to come from men who don’t even recognize that she HAS a system. If the previous Javert chapters were the ones that made him fascinating, then this is the one that makes him repellent to me—not because he gives Fantine her last little push over the edge, that may have been inevitable, but because he doesn’t CARE. In their last interaction, as viciously overpowering as he may have been, he was focused on Fantine, he was thinking about her, she wasn’t just a speedbump in his duty. Now she’s not even that, not even a distraction, just an eyesore before the glory of his triumph. She dies,and he doesn’t even pause to notice a life ended, because it was an unworthy life in his eyes. This is the ugliest thing in Javert, for me, that he can unperson someone this way.* And yet I still don’t hate him. It’s just…sad. He should be better than that. I think part of why Javert works as the antagonist (again, for me) is that he SHOULD be better than this; he’s got so much in him that’s good and fine, but it’s been beaten into this shape. If the real villain in Les Mis is society, than Javert, who IS order and lawful justice but still wrong, is a wonderful expression of it. And taken just as a character, it makes me sad and not just angry, and that’s…scarier, somehow. Whatever he is, he’s scary enough to give Fantine her final shock. And it must have been a great one, because she dies and loses her era-appropriate Plot Disease-ity beauty. But, uh. Then she gets it back. Because Valjean says something to her (I’m assuming “your child will want for nothing” or words to that effect.) 1.8.5- A Fitting Grave Oh, townsfolk of M-sur-M. You are as fickle as your sidequest-hatching Adventure Town nature would have me expect. Although I am highly amused by the one crotchety old anti-Bonapartiste woman. At least that’s SORT OF like a political opinion. I shall pretend that she was one of the handful that always disliked him, cursing his name and factory as the work of that darn Bonapartiste every time she went by. I love Hugo’s cheerful lampshading here. “If you’re wondering how Valjean got in/ and other plottish facts/lalala/ then repeat to yourself ‘We don’t need to know’/ just brace for the Feels Attack!” And, oh, there it is. Am I going to talk about how Fantine gets brushed aside in her death, how even the curé doesn’t think her deserving personal notice, even as part of a bequest ? NOPE NOPE NOPE I am not. I’m not a big one for burials myself, I would be completely content to be vulture food, but there’s no mistaking that FANTINE would have liked a fancier burial, and that this is a way the living of her society show their contempt. She “bore on her brow the mark of the anonymous”, and she never loses it. Does even Valjean ever really see her, and not a sort of living morality test? I don’t know, but it bothers me. It bothers me even more thinking about that woman in Arras who killed her child (apparently) and all the other women of the town who don’t get a Volume about them, and I’m about to spiral into Have You Ever REALLY LOOKED at Theories of Group Loyalty, Like Whoa, mode so I’ll move on, but this bothers me. Tomorrow: Cue ABBA and give my Feelings About Group Identity time to fester, we’re finally facing down WATERLOO. * And one of the many, many reasons I’ll go BUT NO to the Enjolras-is-Javert-of-the-Revolution arguments— Javert sees anyone outside his faith as not human, even when they do nothing against him. Enjolras sees people trying to kill him and everyone with him as brothers; they may be enemies, but they’re never nothing. It’s an important difference. Commentary Serrende Amen!! Gascon-en-exile Hmm, where to start with these two chapters? There’s an awful lot worth discussing, but it would probably be best if I stuck to my areas of interest - which, in this case, are Catholicism and dead people. Fantine’s idealization of “Madeleine” is what suddenly kills her, in a scene that has little to do with medical science and everything to do with symbolism and the power of revelation. I think it was already obvious that Fantine was past the point of thinking of anyone in dynamic terms - Valjean is her savior, Cosette is her one remaining goal, the sisters (who keep getting called nuns in the FMA whenever Hugo uses “''religieuse''"…way to create more confusion, sheesh) are mild sources of benevolence, and Javert is evil incarnate. The inability to think of Valjean otherwise is what knocks her dead and into an anonymous public grave, which "ressembla à son lit.” Ignoring the tried and true death/sex parallel that comes with the naughtier implications of a bed, the tone of the last few paragraphs of this tome is fairly ambivalent. Even though Fantine is condemned to obscurity in life as she was in death, it’s a place of rest for her, she somehow attained some of her former beauty after death, and God knows where to find her. Hardly the pathetic end of a maligned fallen woman, and it’s in line with Hugo’s sometimes unorthodox view of morality that Fantine can come to such a postmortem peace primarily through suffering and lot. It’s true that certain groups of ascetic Catholicism hold that physical deprivation and punishment, the “mortification of the flesh,” is a means of achieving greater spirituality, but that’s a conscious choice and I don’t think that’s what the author is going for here (or with the Amis dying for their supposedly divinely justified cause). Anyway, his judgment of Simplice is also a little unorthodox, but all in all he makes it very difficult to reproach any of them. I was, however, a bit perplexed that Javert apparently respects the clergy above all else when he’s such a figment of human justice. It just doesn’t seem to fit with his complete lack of spirituality elsewhere or the general religious character of France, which more than any other Catholic country has always had trouble positioning the Church as the source of supreme authority over the secular government. We never did anything as tacky as create a new church with our monarchy at the head *ahem* but we did hijack the papacy for around a century and it was awesome and have generally had about a contentious a relationship with the Church as it is possible to have without going Protestant. To make a long rant short, I don’t get you, Javert. *turns the page to the next tome* *deadpan* Scream. Lediableaquatre (reply to Gascon-en-exile) It is so interesting to read this interpretation because it takes into account Fantine’s point of view in her own death scene and her own thoughts. That’s great. Personally, I don’t think Javert’s respect for the clergy is that surprising. More than everything Javert has a very hierarchical view of society and he wants to protect that society. The law is a means for him to do that. (is the “perfect” mean). For Javert the Church is an important part of a society, a part of the hierarchy of society. A part that also organizes it, one of its pillars. And especially a part that prevents it from falling into chaos. He might not be religious - and he really isn’t in my view - but he respects the Church as one respects a superior. It’s got nothing to do with spirituality it’s the Church as a formal institution, as “stone”. As to God, I see Javert as having a rather “Sir Humphrey” view of it. He knows it’s probably there but doesn’t really waste much time thinking about Him. Good luck for Waterloo! Pilferingapples (reply to Gascon-en-exile) #Brick!Club #TI.L8.C4 #TI.L8.C5 #Fantine #Valjean #Javert #Catholicism #dead people #Seriously I forgot exactly where Waterloo was in the Brick Bless your jaded soul, Gascon. It’s nice to know at least one of us is still facing Waterloo with something like equanimity instead of preemptive Gross Sobbing. I’m glad I’m not the only one confused by Javert’s deference to the church’s authority. Maybe he sees *God* as being the ultimate source of order, and the church as God’s direct representative? So it doesn’t matter if the church is otherwise over the secular government? I really don’t know, but I would love to hear more from People What Know About Church Things. Sarah1281 (reply to Pilferingapples' reply) I think it definitely helps him that he seems to think that the Church and the government are in agreement. When he was condemning Fantine to six months in prison, he was actively thinking about God and how God would have done the same thing and followed the law. Religion is supposed to be about morality and to Javert the law is also morality so they’re really one and the same. Kalevala-sage Chronologically epic and multi-tomed as it is, as Les Misérables progresses, the “current events” of these chapters will ultimately become Valjean’s backstory; this isn’t problematic in the slightest as his tendency to evade the law for the benefit of others isn’t the most dynamic of traits. Offering a comparison of his bread-stealing and fugitive rescue of Cosette, it’s interesting that both illegal actions, while apparently altruistic (feeding the children; heeding Fantine’s will), have coincided with his own interests (feeding himself; getting out of jail)—Catholic as he is, thus far, Valjean has never needed to fall back on, say, retribution theology, as his magnanimosity is consistently rewarded pretty damn tangibly. Even if his confessions are more eloquent in the courtroom than they were on Myriel’s doorstep, one could make the argument that in reclaiming his old name and identity, not to mention the crimes that have come with it, he has reverted to the same self-preservational morality of the bread theft…or one could simply call his escape a convenient byproduct of serving Fantine. In either case, as Valjean’s ethics, at least in intention, aren’t inconsistent between his original introduction and this exit point in the tome, the fact that his acts now ultimately contribute only to a solid backstory will later alienate the self-interest of these crimes. Such absolution is pretty standard for those milder cousins of Mary Sues, among whose number Valjean and Fantine might count themselves, who suffer and sin in contexts tragic enough that a) their sin is excused and b) their suffering makes them noble in the eyes of God. In Valjean’s case, this is subverted a bit as the concierge remembers him for his human aspect rather than his divine benevolence in a divine ordeal, but just wait until Valjean catches one of the rare male cases of MNCCD. It’s truly difficult to discern Hugo’s religious beliefs given the Catholicism of his protagonist and his seemingly-oppositional description of Javert as ”''religieux, superficiel et correct sur ce point comme sur tous''”—some Googling informs me of his displeasure with the Catholic Church’s lassitude in matters of poverty, but he certainly hasn’t carried that over into the world of the book, rife with Myriels and Simplices as it is. Curious, though, that Javert is one of few “blind,” “superficial” Catholics at this point…as Pilf said, this excuses him from antagonism somewhat and shifts that blame onto society itself. On top of all this, we get our first taste of metaphorical mothers in these chapters, too! Granted, earth-mother is perhaps more universal (not to mention more, er, hippie) and not as symbolic as republic-mother, but hooray for Fantine for winning the dubious-genealogy race! There is a 90% chance I am merely continuing to write words here in order to avoid Waterloo.